Faked news: “Israel is now the world’s Covid hotspot with almost 0.2% of population catching it yesterday”

Faked news: “Israel is now the world’s Covid hotspot with almost 0.2% of population catching it yesterday”

Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows there were a record 1,892 Covid cases per million people in Israel on Wednesday — nearly 0.2 per cent of the entire population in a single day.

Source: Israel is now the world’s Covid hotspot with almost 0.2% of population catching it yesterday | Daily Mail Online

Look closely at the Epicurve for Israel. The country went from very low levels to sky high – in one day. There is no biological explanation for that.

In fact, all schools re-opened on September 1 and all 1.9 million students were issued Rapid Tests to be used at home within 48 hours of the start of classes.

No one says anything publicly about the false positive rates of tests. A PCR test with a false positive rate of 0.3% sounds fantastic – until you work out the Bayesian probabilities. If the prevalence of a disease in the population is less than 0.3% and you test everyone, then the majority of your “positives” will be false positives.

But they are using Rapid tests which have a higher, albeit never specified, false positive rate.

Los Angeles County tried the screening test approach earlier in 2021; 100% of the positive test results turned out to be false positives.

Or before that “Seven in 10 positive Covid cases in school children likely to be wrong“.

I explained the false positive problem and Bayes Theorem in the spring of 2020. Read that.

The 0.2% calculation is bogus for the reasons outlined above and positive test cases will likely be low again the next few days.

This news report is literally sensationalized fake news and reflects horribly on the quality of news reporting, globally. When a story involves 7th grade math, reporters fail at it.

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